The difficulties related to the large water volumes required in mining processes have led to the development of numerous techniques to optimize its consumption. The use of large ponds for tailings deposition, which hold most of the water involved in the process, allow high rates of evaporation due to a large exposed surface area. An option to reduce the rate of evaporation is to divide the surface of the tailings beaches in several cells that allow the tailings storing by covering a reduced and controlled area. Thus the recovered water in the deposited mass is improved. These cells are typically formed by embankments constructed with available materials from mining operations, such as waste rock or existing quarries. New blasting works may also be required to attend these structures demand. Occasionally, the use of large amounts of rockfill or soils for this purpose can result in high costs due to quarrying transport and considerable material losses due to a low tailings foundation bearing capacity. This, combined with the low shear strength of the foundation demands a large base width for these structures to ensure global stability, thereby occupying an important volume that could be otherwise advantageously used for tailings storage, reducing the TSF?s required capacity. Geotextile tubes consist of large modules whose function is to filter the water used in tailings storage, while retaining and consolidating the solids within the geotextile. Thus, a stable structure is created that can be used for structural purposes. In this paper, a different alternative to the construction of rock and soil embankments for a tailings beach subdivision is proposed through the use of geotextile tubes filled with tailings. This can result in a reduction of required rock quarry materials, as well as an improvement of volume disposition optimization and execution rates. Some important aspects for the application of this alternative are analyzed: comparison proposed versus the traditional methods, , in terms of static and seismic stability, design criteria and constructive cases, considering the current practice and realistic aspects of the tailings dams.
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